The clearing
Friday September 09th 2016, 10:56 pm
Filed under: Food,Friends,LYS

There was a photo and a note on Facebook: Did anybody want… Free to a good home…

Someone else asked for the big red crockpot. I asked if the smaller one had been spoken for. (Much more our size anyway.)

It had not. I headed over. The doors at Purlescence are locked now but lots of work was going on on the other side as the place was slowly being emptied of its ten years.

Kaye carried the thing to my car for me and, almost there, threw in the thought of, You wouldn’t be interested in a toaster oven?

YES! I exclaimed a little harder than quite entirely reasonable, surprising myself. I had long wanted to be able to warm up just a bit of the kitchen for some small baked thing, but not enough to justify replacing my elderly cracked-plastic simple two-slicer. We don’t have a lot of countertop space. I had not wanted to want one and it all kind of came out in that one-word blurt.

She apologized that it needed cleaning, but I found when I got home that it needed very little. It’s cute. It’s a two-bagel-slice top with a pull-down door in front and not much more of a footprint than my old toaster, a total win.

But the biggest thing about the both of them is the bit of history she offered with them: all those Thursday nights, all those knit nights, they’d had these tucked away upstairs for a quick bite to eat.

So that’s how they’d made it through all those long days over all those years.

These appliances had sustained my friends so that they could sustain our knitting community and now I get to have them here with me. And someone else got to take home part of that history too, and I like that. I like it a lot.

And I love that I now have a toaster oven that kind of looks like an old jukebox.

I need to go toast me some toast. Anyone got a favorite slow cooker recipe? Chicken tikka masala, maybe?


5 Comments so far
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Pot roast!

I put small potatoes on the bottom, carrots, celery, onion. Coat meat with Penzey’s English Prime Rib Rub before browning. I sometimes use veggie broth for the liquid.

Now … Where’s MY slow cooker?!

Comment by Anne 09.09.16 @ 11:42 pm

I just found one!

https://youtu.be/du1lh4NFnos

Comment by Jody 09.10.16 @ 5:24 am

I use a slow cooker nearly every day! I have two and it helps enormously because I set up a meal in the AM and do not have to think about it until dinner time. (The time between 4-5:30 is sometimes rather hairy with two kindergarteners and not a good time for from-scratch cooking!) There are some great resources on the web and in books. I strongly recommend Stephanie O’Dea’s website and books, those are great starting places, here is one of her resources:
http://www.ayearofslowcooking.com

Comment by joanne 09.10.16 @ 7:12 am

I live by my slow cooker but I’ll give you my best remembered recipe. It comes with a story (what doesn’t?). College student with a husband that was desperately trying to get on the main call list for the union. Now you have to know when I was young I slept the sleep of the dead. So I get a round slow cooker (that’s importantly) as a wedding gift. I found a recipe that had you grease the inside of the cooker and then put a corn tortilla in the bottom (has to be corn). Layer ground beef, onion, canned black beans, salsa. Do this about three times, end with a corn tortilla. Pour over some enchilada sauce. Put it on about five at night for husband to have when he comes home from show shift (2 am). Plan on feeding the two of you at least three days with it. Go to bed and don’t wake up for many hours. However, when I did get up there absolutely nothing left!! What! That was a lot of food. I woke up husband to get the skinny. He sleepy informed me that he had brought four guys home because he said he knew his wife had cooked “something” in the slow cooker and as this was a “new” device they all came over to check it out. And ate it all. Well. I had to scrabble for something else for the rest of the week but one of those guys? He was the call steward and after that date, husband had many MANY more calls to work.

I forgave the husband. And Oh? The dish is tasty.

Comment by Afton 09.10.16 @ 10:07 am

Tell Afton I loved her story!

Comment by LynnM 09.12.16 @ 12:39 am



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